From the Archives: SPRING BREAK

Miami, FL.

I’ve always idealized Miami. It seemed to me to be the land of the endless party– every hour of every day is a midsummer Friday, 5PM, all play, no work, flashy clothes, flashy cars, bikinis, palm trees. Time stays still – the leaves don’t fall off the trees.

Walking around South Beach pulled back the curtain on my fantasy. Miami is like where the excess fat trimmings of the finest cuts of meat come to sizzle. Give those fat trimmings a CoolSculpt six-pack and a car with an amplifier, and you’ve created your very own South Beacher. It wasn’t filled with drunk and rowdy spring breakers – thank you very much, men in blue of the Miami-Dade county police department, for your service – but the materialism and vanities of the New Yorkers I’ve so closely critiqued seemed to be magnified under the sun, stripping the sheep’s clothing (and, well, most of their clothing, anyway) from the flocks tanning on the beach. This seems like a harsh critique of a city that I’ve just stepped foot in for the weekend, but it’s clear, to me, that it’s steeped in American big-city culture. Maybe it’s just made more apparent by the rent-a-day exotic car dealerships that dot Collins Avenue and the ubiquitous plastic surgery disasters.

The clubs in Brickell were mobbed by twentysomethings in jeans and shirts and awkward crew cuts. The lines, we were shocked to find, were not separated by gender or by beauty. I complain about Miami’s vain streak, but I myself suffer from the same vice when situationally appropriate (or drunk). Every God-fearing American loves meritocracy until an advantage reveals itself. Case in point: in New York, they pick you out and fish you up if you’ve got pretty scales. They’ve got some deep-sea indiscriminate trawling operations at Elleven, it appears. An hour and a half later, we had barely rounded the corner of the line, and I hadn’t eavesdropped on any illicit foreign operations or drug-fueled bacchanals, and I started to grow bored.

Our first night, the girls and I shared margaritas and giggled about our hot waiter. One drink in, and we witness eight officers, emblazoned with “COUNTER-TERRORISM” logos on their bulletproof vests, making an unresisted arrest at the bar not five feet away from us.

“Damn, they patted me down at Newark because of my Juicy Couture sweatpants, but they didn’t catch the kilo of coke that guy must’ve brought in?”

My friends and I know that cats have nine lives, and if curiosity kills that cat, we’ve still got a few more left in the bank. It’s revealed to us, through the hushed whispering of the bachelorette party behind us, that the mild-mannered man at the bar pulled a knife out at a fellow patron. The six-inch pocket knife impromptu show-and-tell was the piece-de-resistance to the (clearly gripping) story he was re-enacting, and the bartender took the whole switchblade-at-the-bar thing a bit too seriously.

“Who hasn’t flashed a weapon as a joke?”

“Yeah, that’s why I love my low-cut shirts.”

We found the ever-elusive bottom of bottomless brunch after the waitress cut us off after what may or may not have been six pitchers of mimosas. Forty forgotten film photos later, I found myself suntanning, thinking about how I’d fare if I moved to the Sunshine state. No matter how eclectic a place seems to look from outside the fishbowl, there’s always a level of conformity you have to follow. In New York, the dress code is black. In Miami, you’re expected to be colorful– but the same kind of colorful as everyone else. If you move, you don’t change yourself, you just change location. I guess I’d be equally distracted by the prospect of suntanning on the beach as I am by the prospect of a gander around the West Village when I’ve got work to finish.

Becky

10 hour drive from Miami to Seaside.

Seaside, FL.

I’ve been going to Seaside, Florida since I was eight years old. As my parents did construction on our house there or other miscellaneous things, I found myself being the only kid there during low-tourist season. I would spend hours riding my bike, reading in the book store, painting pottery, and swimming in the community pools. Seaside is very safe, so I was able to do my own thing all the time without my parents worrying. It became a sanctuary for little me to just explore a town, my own interests, and whatever fantasies I came up with throughout my day to keep myself entertained.

As I’ve gotten older, Seaside has become more and more popular. I spent middle school spring breaks riding my bike with my friends, buying and eating cookie dough without my mom finding out (sorry mom), and having late-night chats on the beach pavilions. Throughout high school and now college, a similar pattern has followed me.

The nice thing about Seaside is that it’s a tradition-based town: most things stay the same. So even though I can’t control getting older, I can still walk through the town and feel like time hasn’t moved. I see where my friend and I did our “morning rounds” of eating donuts after climbing up a tree; or where I would try to practice my gymnastics skills for the future Olympics (don’t ask how that’s going); or the pool where I spent hours pretending to be a mermaid and doing underwater flips that I could never do on land. Even after bringing multiple friend groups and multiple versions of myself to the small town, it still houses my little eight year old self, riding a bike somewhere and memorizing house names.

Alisia